“Well, I should think I might,” retorted Billy, a little tremulously, “after all I've heard about it. I should think everybody knew you were doing it, Bertram. Actually, I'm not sure Marie's scrub-lady won't ask me some day how Mr. Bertram's picture is coming on!”
“That's the dickens of it, in a way,” sighed Bertram, with a faint smile. “I am amazed—and a little frightened, I'll admit—at the universality of the interest. You see, the Winthrops have been pleased to spread it, for one reason or another, and of course many already know of the failures of Anderson and Fullam. That's why, if I should fail—”
“But you aren't going to fail,” interposed the girl, resolutely.
“No, I know I'm not. I only said 'if,'” fenced the man, his voice not quite steady.
“There isn't going to be any 'if,'” settled Billy. “Now tell me, when is the exhibition?”
“March twentieth—the private view. Mr. Winthrop is not only willing, but anxious, that I show it. I wasn't sure that he'd want me to—in an exhibition. But it seems he does. His daughter says he has every confidence in the portrait and wants everybody to see it.”
“That's where he shows his good sense,” declared Billy. Then, with just a touch of constraint, she asked: “And how is the new, latest pose coming on?”
“Very well, I think,” answered Bertram, a little hesitatingly. “We've had so many, many interruptions, though, that it is surprising how slow it is moving. In the first place, Miss Winthrop is gone more than half the time (she goes again to-morrow for a week!), and in this portrait I'm not painting a stroke without my model before me. I mean to take no chances, you see; and Miss Winthrop is perfectly willing to give me all the sittings I wish for. Of course, if she hadn't changed the pose and costume so many times, it would have been done long ago—and she knows it.”
“Of course—she knows it,” murmured Billy, a little faintly, but with a peculiar intonation in her voice.
“And so you see,” sighed Bertram, “what the twentieth of March is going to mean for me.”